The Trump administration has urged Pakistanis to ask tough questions to China on the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, as a top American diplomat launched a blistering attack on the multi-billion dollar project which the official claimed is going to take a toll on Islamabad's economy.
The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a planned network of roads, railways and energy projects linking China's resource-rich Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with Pakistan's strategic Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea.
The CPEC was launched in 2015 when President Xi Jinping visited Pakistan and it now envisages investment of over USD 50 billion in different projects of development in Pakistan.
"We hope Pakistanis will ask Beijing tough questions on debt, accountability, fairness and transparency... Ask the Chinese government why it is pursuing a development model in Pakistan, that significantly deviates from what brought China its own economic success," Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice Wells said on Thursday in a major policy address.
"Why doesn't the Pakistani public know the price for CPEC's most expensive project, or how it's being determined on debt?"
Wells said, "Inflated pricing of power and development projects is not good for the Pakistani people. The CPEC almost always takes the form of burdensome loans or financing with Chinese state-owned enterprises and the Chinese government profiting. This is hardly the 'peace and win-win cooperation' OBOR is supposed to facilitate."
What are the long-term effects in Pakistan of Chinese financing practices, and what are the burdens that have fallen on the new government to manage with now with an estimated USD 15 billion in debt to the Chinese government, and another USD 6.7 billion in Chinese commercial debt?
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